Kathy Fuller: Fictional Realism Required?

So even though I refuse to watch the Walking Dead, I saw this on Pinterest today:

which spawned a little nine comment discussion on realism v. escapism. Your mission as a writer is to make your made-up story as “real” as possible. Some people, including a few folks on Pinterest, don’t think that’s necessary, while others get highly annoyed when something implausible occurs and takes them out of their suspended reality. This basically happens all the time in the action genre: the bad guys can’t shoot the broad side of a barn while the main character is always dead on accurate, for example. That’s become an action staple, so no one questions that leap in logic anymore. read article

Love & Money Dept – TV Writing Deals for 11/25/12

Ratings & Demos Note: We’ve been amazed to learn via our own internal ratings system that Luv & $$ is the least read department of TVWriter™. But we’re forging ahead anyway cuz everybody knows ratings are bogus.

  • Jessie Miller & Bennett Wolin (no credits cuz they’re newbies – yay, newbs!) have sold a sitcom pilot script, THE MESSED UPTONS, to NBC. (Hey, didja catch that subtle pun in the title? Not bad, huh?)
  • Neil Tokin (RICHIE RICH) is adapting Kate Braestrup’s novel, Here If You Need Me, as a “spiritual” drama series pilot for CBS. (Whatcha think of that “spiritual” thing? Yeah, we’re pretty meh about it too, even without knowing any details.)
  • Novelist Ayelet Waldman is writing LOCO, a CBS drama about a couple who take in their best friends’ “unusual and gifted” children when said friends are killed. (Askin’ yourself if you coulda sold this idea if it’d been yours? Yeah, us too…and we all know what the answer is, don’t we?)
  • Kenan Thompson (SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE) is writing, producing, and starring in an untitled NBC sitcom about a New Yawk kinda guy who moves into his in-laws’ house in the burbs. (Askin’ yourself if his wife moves in with him? Yeah, us too…but maybe she won’t cuz that way there’s more casting money for, you know, Kenan?)

Wow, TVWriter™ & CBS’ Les Moonves Finally Agree on Something

Good to see that the Les(s) Man is finally facing reality:

USA Today reports that Les(s) Moonves, Chairman of CBS Corp – which means he controls CBS, Showtime and half the CW – now claims to have been waiting, waiting, waiting for the glorious moment when alternate programming like DVR viewing, online streaming, mobile viewing, etc. to dominate the television world…and now that time has come. read article

LUTHER Season 3 Has Begun Production

Why is Idris Elba smiling? Does he know it makes him unrecognizable?

Idris is back!

Word is that a new 4-episode series/season of LUTHER will be on the air on BBC sometime during the third quarter of 2013, to be followed soonish (that usually means three or four months later) in the U.S. on BBC America.

Here’s the official announcement about one of the best-written (and best-performed) cop shows evah: read article

LB: In the Words of Nikki Finke: “Toldja!”

Ah, I love the smell of vindication in the morning!

Study: Online Video Viewers Start Leaving After Waiting Two Seconds – by David Murphy

One of the more frustrating things that can happen to your average Web surfer is the dreaded, “Why is my video not playing” error. Whether YouTube’s having a hiccup, your connection’s fizzling out, your browser’s taking a nap or some other perfect storm of problems is preventing you from watching two minutes of a cute kitty cat do its cute kitty cat thing, the end result is the same: No video.

You have a few choices when this happens. You can wait it out. You can hit refresh and hope that the problem goes away. Or, if you’re like most people, you can get hacked off and close the Web page. read article